Interesting Links for 05-08-2017
Aug. 5th, 2017 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
- A Dinosaur So Well Preserved It Looks Like a Statue
- (tags: dinosaurs archeology )
- Have Smartphones Changed The Latest Generation? - The Atlantic
- (tags: phones Technology society children )
- The Ctenophore evolved it's brain entirely separately to all other life
- (tags: evolution brain life )
- It’s not that your teeth are too big: your jaw is too small
- (tags: teeth evolution )
- Tryptophan may help soothe inflamed gut
- (tags: mice microbiome )
- Nuclear is the safest major energy source
- (tags: nuclearpower safety )
- Math Journal Editors Quit to Start Competing Open Access Journal
- (tags: academia publishing OpenAccess )
no subject
Date: 2017-08-05 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-05 12:45 pm (UTC)Will fix from home!
Smartphones.
Date: 2017-08-05 07:18 pm (UTC)Re: Smartphones.
Date: 2017-08-06 02:52 pm (UTC)Math Journal Editors Quit to Start Competing Open Access Journal
Date: 2017-08-05 07:25 pm (UTC)Re: Math Journal Editors Quit to Start Competing Open Access Journal
Date: 2017-08-05 10:19 pm (UTC)Initially run on an "open access for individuals but institutions are supposed to pay a modest subscription fee" model, this turned out to be unworkable in practice (otherwise sympathetic librarians found it hard to justify paying an effectively optional subscription for a weird new journal when fees for established journals were going up). So they now run on a "modest subscription fee and everything older than four years is open access" model, which seems to work.
A few years in (round about 2004, I think) this spawned a new not-for-profit academic publishing company, Mathematical Sciences Publishers, which subsequently brought out a few more journals and took over the publication (but not the ownership) of the long-established Pacific Journal of Mathematics. I worked for them for several years (my career in IT had literally just gone up in flames and I was looking for an opportunity to go back into academia, having just finished my PhD), mostly doing LaTeX production editing, Perl programming and miscellaneous system administration for the Warwick-based side of the operation (most of the rest was based in Berkeley, California).
About ten or eleven years ago, the editorial board of Topology resigned en masse, to set up a new journal with the catchy title of The Journal of Topology. Most of the mathematical community then boycotted Topology in favour of G&T and JTop. Elsevier tried to keep it afloat by hunting around for a new editorial board and slowly eking out the papers still in the publication queue, but ultimately they failed and Topology closed in 2009 after nearly fifty years in publication.
I keep thinking that somebody should write a book about all this, along the lines of Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma, but nobody seems to be doing so yet. I'm slightly tempted to give it a go, after I've finished my current book and the next one on my list.
Re: Math Journal Editors Quit to Start Competing Open Access Journal
Date: 2017-08-06 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-06 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-06 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-06 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 10:03 am (UTC)Secondly, there seems to be a lot of tweaking of designs within programmes so that often it appears that your nuclear fleet is actually a series of proto-types with the associated costs of doing things for the first time.
The third factor is that with large, long term projects with huge capital requirements comes a long-term financial risk which makes funding difficult or requires long-dated (and politically difficult) guaranteed off-take arrangements.
Smaller modular designs which you can make in a factory like Liberty Ships would seem to offer a way forward. As would buying double-digit numbers of the same design from the Russians or the Chinese. The former seems more politically acceptable in the West.
That said, I'm still of the opinion that renewables plus storage prove cheaper than nuclear plus storage and on a timescale so quick that the nuclear industry struggle to react.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-08 08:20 am (UTC)The Chinese are looking at a pebble bed modular reactor based on a German design of about 250 MW. One of the applications for it is to replace the power train in coal power plants by running them in parallel.
Lots of people appear to be looking at modular designs but it's difficult attracting financing in a world where gas and solar PV cheap.
The Indian government has recently approved a fleet of 900MW nuclear plants. Which is something you can do if, like India, you have a population of more than billion and a goodly fraction of them without any electricity at all.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-09 01:32 am (UTC)I keep reading about the Indian thorium reactors. I lived near a reactor capable of using thorium (and actually did so) and have always thought it would be a good idea to pursue that. (Particularly for India.)
no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 01:25 pm (UTC)A levelised cost of electricity of about $60 / MWH is my ballpark figure for being in the game.
http://www.theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/2409802/study-finds-advanced-reactors-will-competitive-costs
no subject
Date: 2017-08-12 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-14 09:23 am (UTC)I've seen solar PV project below $30 / MWH but no wind project that low.
I think it may turn out to be the case that a small amount of modular nuclear on a grid avoids a lot of battery storage. The battery storage that I think it avoids is the stuff that is used least. The storage of summer sun solar PV for use in February.
AT $60 / MWH or more, some nuclear plant might be cheaper than storage. Depends obviously on the cost of the storage technology, how much hydro there is on the grid and how interconnected the grids are.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-07 09:38 am (UTC)